Making Your Own Natural Essential Oil Bug Repellant, Mosquito and Swamp Cooler Mold Resistant Spray

I swear I have posted about this before but maybe I just posted about it in passing in the past or mentioned it in another post as I can't seem to find a post on it so I will post about it today as this is something my family has used for 15 years at least. I have used "Thieves Oil" which is an immune boosting oil mix from Young Living oils and it helped heal my toenail fungus and has kept my family well for about 20 years or more. Here is a post to the toenail fungal fix post.

Many years back, I research using essential oils to repel bed bugs as we went on several missions to Peru as a family and my mother got eaten alive in NY by bedbugs in one hotel there and I read lots on this when we got "biting mites" years back so I am a bit paranoid about not wanting to bring anything home with us from our trips. 

Before that time, we used "Thieves Oil" for mosquitos and it worked super well. But, with that research, I started making my own "bug spray" and added a few more oils that I thought would help the situation. I made larger bottles that we used in Peru and I would spray it around the base of the mattresses on the bed, pull up anything touching the ground up and tuck it into the box springs and make sure the bed wasn't touching the wall or nightstand and then spraying this spray on the edges of the mattress did the trick and we had no problems with anything biting us. I also read they can get into your luggage so we sprayed the zippered area on the luggage as we did see some cockroaches at some of the hotels. We kept them on the metal stands and kept them zipped up as well as hung our backpacks and bags from the hanger in the rooms just to be safe. 

While on our second trip to Peru, we cleaned out a house that was a garbage recycling hoarder house. The woman didn't own land so she couldn't have a bank account and anything in the house would be stolen so she collected recyclable stuff, raised animals and stored it all in her house and yard. When she needed money, she would just take stuff to be recycled and that was her "bank." It was such a nightmare with all sorts of rodents, spiders, bugs and animals with fleas that everyone in our group sprayed themselves with DEET spray. I don't do well with chemicals and knew this "Bug" mix would work. We sprayed it on our hair and clothes avoiding the face and hands. My girls and I got no bites and the spiders left us alone. At one point, I had to brush a huge poisonous looking brightly colored spider of a woman in our group. The next day, everyone on the bus used our mix when we returned to that same house to do more work.

One thing I love about this oil is that it smells divine! People always say our house smells like Christmas as the oils I put into the mix are:

Cinnamon / Cassia
Clove
Rosemary
Lemon
Eucalyptus
Citronella
Sometimes, I will add:
Tea Tree
Peppermint
Orange 

I buy the oils in the larger "NOW" Brand bottles or bulk from another source and then mix the entire thing into a larger bottle. I just pour in equal amounts of the top five oils and less of the Citronella oil as it is a strong oil. If someone doesn't like the smell, I add peppermint, wintergreen, spearmint, or orange oils just to tone down the other smells, but my girls like the smells and so many times, people would ask what smells so good when we were using the oil. 

REMEMBER, this is for your hair and clothes, not for your skin! I don't use therapeutic organic oils for this mix because we aren't using it on our face etc. The oils can burn and also, can make your skin photosensitive to light so we make a larger bottle, transport it in the glass bottles and once there, pour a little into the sprayer bottle and just spray lightly the top / back of the hair and spray the clothes and it does keep the bugs away and you don't want to spray it towards the face as the oils can get into the eyes if it is windy etc so spray it away from people onto the back of the hair or if you are wearing a hat or headband, you can spray those as well. This oil can stain if you drip onto a hat or clothes you like and will leave an oil mark but if you use a fine sprayer, you won't notice anything, but since it is an oil, it will remain on your hat and clothes until washed so if you spray it on the top of a baseball cap, it will work for a long time.

Another WONDERFUL use for this product is to keep mildew and mold from growing in a swamp cooler reservoir or a sump pump collection container, furnace pump collection container etc. If I am leaving town for a few days, mold can grow in the water or into the cedar pads on the sides of the cooler so I just pour a few drops of this into the swamp cooler water and turn on the cooler for a few minutes before leaving town and the oils penetrate into the cedar pads and make the house smell wonderful. The house smells great when we get back and I don't have to take time to clean out a moldy mess from the reservoir so it is a win, win, win in my book! 

I LOVE this mix and all of its uses. I have sent it with all of my girls on their missions and travels and my oldest went to the Philippines and had companions with head lice and she never got it. I think perhaps this may be part of the reason as it is in the luggage and I sent her with a large bottle and sprayers to use and I know that when Princess Two went to Taiwan on her mission, her luggage got moldy due to a washer flooding the storage space and she was able to kill it off and remove the smell using this oil. I bought a massage table years ago and the person who owned it was a smoker and I sprayed newspaper with this oil mix and stored the entire thing in a large plastic bag in the sun and between the oil and heat, the cigarette smoke smell was removed. 

I made a video of how I make it as well so hopefully between the post and video, I will have answered any questions. 

Have a Blessed Day!